Ohio cardiologist shot, killed in Pakistan

LANCASTER – A Fairfield Medical Center doctor was shot and killed Monday while visiting a family grave in Pakistan with his wife and 2-year-old son, according to The Associated Press.

Mehdi Ali Qamar, an interventional cardiologist on staff with FMC for more than 10 years, was in Rabwah, Pakistan, volunteering his medical expertise while on sabbatical.

“He was volunteering at the Tahir Heart (Institute), a heart hospital founded by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community that serves the underprivileged,” FMC Chief Nursing Officer Cynthia Pearsall said in a statement.

Qamar was shot 10 times by two gunmen on a motorcycle, according to the AP report. His wife and son were unharmed. Qamar was 50 and is survived by his wife and three sons.

“He will be greatly missed by his colleagues and friends here at Fairfield Medical Center as well as his patients,” Pearsall said.

Qamar was a member of the minority Ahmadi sect. His killing follows similar attacks by Islamist radicals targeting Ahmadis.

Saleem Uddin, a spokesman for Ahmadiyya Jamaat Pakistan, an organization representing Ahmadis, told the AP that Qamar’s killing was part of a campaign against Ahmadis and the heart institute.

He condemned the “brutal murder of this doctor who served fellow human beings without discrimination.”

Qamar, a Pickerington resident, was originally from Pakistan but has been an American citizen for at least 10 years after moving to the country in the 1990s.

His 6-year-old son was in Pakistan at the time of the shooting, but was not with his parents, and his 16-year-old son remained in Ohio, the AP reported.

Qamar was a founding physician member of the Gordon B. Snider Cardiovascular Institute at FMC in 2011 and was honored as a Legendary Philanthropist by the medical center in 2013.